Oh that must be why multiple players this year, including all-star Jrue Holliday publicly asked Bradley to tone down his defense.

And by multiple, you mean one? bradley is a well known defender because of his full court press defense. what else does he provide? people just watch the guy for like 5 possessions and think he does this on every possession and think he is great defensively.

this. Shumpert returning from ACL and meniscus was awful for his shumpness, (swag to the layman) especially with respect to his being a good defender vs great defender. His weakness on D is getting around screens, but as an on-ball iso defender he's just a beast.

His offensive game has changed, also due to his injury. With so much time rehabbing, and not being able to even approach rookie-shump-level explosiveness (with respect to offensive game), his jumpshot has improved by leaps and bounds. pun intended. He hits the 3 at a damn nice clip, someone else can grab the stat, and can hit a midrange J. We'll see how he does in the playoffs. Bradley vs Shump is going to be a lot of fun.

Feel free to call me out on this, but it seems like a lot of the answers in this thread can be boiled down to "do you root for a team in the western conference, or the eastern conference."

And by multiple, you mean one? bradley is a well known defender because of his full court press defense. what else does he provide? people just watch the guy for like 5 possessions and think he does this on every possession and think he is great defensively.

By multiple I mean multiple. I gave one example.

I've watched at least 60 Celtics games this year. He puts that pressure on over half of the possessions he plays. He's great man to man, great pressure defense, good help, shoots passing lanes, plays transition well, has very good hands for stripping and stealing the ball. The only time someone has a big advantage is if there's a switch and someone over 6'5" is posting him up.

I think Thabo is the best out of all these guys. Him and Allen are pretty much equal defensively, but Thabo is a 40% 3 pt shooter while Allen can't shoot at all, so Thabo actually stretches the floor.

This X 100. I can't believe people have the audacity to say Bradley, and Allen are better offensive players than Thabo. Thabo is a far better shooter than both of these guys, and his 3 PT shooting this year (and in 2011) was exceptional for a player who makes his living off of defense.

at anyone ranking Shumpert anywhere but last. Talk about letting reputation (of which he has only spent one season building, mind you) preface you perspective. Have any of you watched Shumpert this season? Yes, he's recovering from a serious injury, but that still doesn't dispell that he has made far less an impact on his team's success than Thabo, Allen, and Bradley.

Like, I can't even take any poster that says Shumpert is #1 as a serious basketball mind.

Yes, he's recovering from a serious injury, but that still doesn't dispell that he has made far less an impact on his team's success than Thabo, Allen, and Bradley.

um... yes it does? i'm not disputing your ranking Shump last btw, just your reasoning for doing so. Allen and Thabo have played and started 78 and 80 games out of the year, respectively, while Bradley and Shumpert have played and started 48 and 44 each. Take into account that Shumpert's injury was a severe knee injury while Bradley's was a dislocated shoulder, its pretty easy to diagnose his comparatively (compared to last year as well as the other 3's campaigns this year) diminished impact on the Knicks.

like a previous poster said, confidence is huge and I hope and believe that Shump continues to regain it and display it in this year's playoffs and moving forward.

shump has the most potential. bradley extremely overrated. got abused by deron williams, almost fouled out in less than 20 mins. shump would never allow that. that being said, shumps gotta recover and get the kinks out properly.

Just to clarify he had double shoulder surgery. His left shoulder dislocated and caused damage at least 4 times, then his right went out of whack because he had to compensate for his left.

I did not know this so thank you for clarifying. I do feel like my point still stands in terms of the ramifications of their respective injuries regarding the type/style of defense that they respectively play. as Clyde always say, defense is played with the feet!